Organizational communication
Organization
Definition: a collection, or system, of
individuals who commonly, through a
hierarchy of ranks and division of labor,
seek to achieve a predetermined goal.
Division of labor
• Craftsman produces entire product.
• Early in the industrial revolution it was
found that organization could produce more
by allowing individuals to specialize
through a division of labor than by making
each person produce entire product.
Span of control
• Specialized functions require individual
supervision.
• This requirement results in the concept of span of
control in organizations - that is, a limit on the
authority of the individual supervisor.
• Span of control is often determined by the number
of people who can effectively be managed by one
supervisor.
• As more workers are added to the organization,
more supervisors are needed and more upper-level
managers are required to oversee their activities.
• Pyramid of control - hierarchy
Chain of command
• Chain of command - the formal communication system
in an organization.
• Orders are sent down through the formal system.
• People in the organization may also communicate
informally - outside the channels indicated on the
organization chart.
• Both types of communication - formal and informal help organization to move toward achieving its goals.
• System of formal organizational communication also
requires members to act in certain expected roles.
Industrial versus Postindustrial Society
Two the most important changes :
(1) Nature of jobs is changing
(2) The type of employees is changing.
(1) Nature of jobs is changing
• Bell (1976) “ An industrial society is a game
against fabricated nature, in which Man has
used energy to make large machines that add
to his power to transform his word. But a
post-industrial society is a game between
persons, between teacher and student, doctor
and patient, research team members, and so
forth.”
(1) Nature of jobs is changing
• Primary industrial society manufactures goods.
• Postindustrial society provides services.
• More people hold white-collars jobs than blue-collar
jobs.
• White-collars jobs involve providing services such as
trade, finance, real estate, transportation, education,
health, research, government, and so on.
A service industry, to a great extent, is based more
on a person-to person relation rather than a man-tomachine relation.
• Information society.
(2) The type of employees is changing
• These changes are dramatically influencing
organizational communication.
• Historically, organizations have been
owerwhelmingly male. Those males were native.
• It will become increasingly necessary to learn to
communicate within a context of cultural diversity.
The study of human communication in
organizations is more relevant today than ever
before.
Importance of communication
• When managers and other responsible person in business
organization are asked how much of the work day spent in
communication, the replies range about 85 to 99 percent
(Zelko and Dance,1965)
• Relationship between communication and employee
productivity:
• Urban hospitals (Jain,1973) - the quality of supervisory
communication (as perceived by subordinates) correlated highly with
quality od superordinates’ performance.
• Automative manufacturing plants (Hain and Widgerz,1973, Hain and
Tubbs,1975) - the quality of supervisory communication correlated
highly with high employee performance, high product quality, low
absenteeism, and low job turnover.
• Researchers have also discovered that communication
skills are rated higher than technical skills in some
fields.
• It was shown that in evaluating job performance,
engineering supervisors rated engineers more heavily on
their communication abilities than on their engineering
skills.
• Importance of communication abilities in personal
careers:
• Schein (1978) studied the stages of people’s careers in
organizations and emphasized the Importance of communication
abilities at every one of those stages.
• Jennings (1971) says that when a corporate president gets fired, it
is usually because of deficient communication skills.
• Japanese management practices - factors
associated with the Japanese economical successes
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Lifetime employment
Slow evaluation and promotion
Nonspecialized career paths
Implicit control mechanism
Collective decision making
Collective responsibility
Wholistic concern
Three functions of communication
in an organization
Conrad (1985)
Conrad, C. (1985). Strategic Organizational Communications: Cultures,
Situations, and Adaptation. N.Y., Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
(1) The command function
(2) The relational function
(3) The ambiguity-management function
1. The command function
• Communication allows members of the
organization to issue, receive, interpret, and
act on commands.
• Two types of communication that make up
this function are
– directions
– feedback
• The goal is the succesful influence of other
members of the organization.
• The outcome is coordination among the many
interdependent members of the organization.
2. The relational function
• Communication allows members of the
organization to create and maintain productive
business and personal relationships with other
members of the organization.
• Relationships on the job affect job performance
in many ways, e.g. job satisfaction, the flow of
communication both down and up the
organizational hierarchy.
3. The ambiguity-management function
• Choices in an organizational setting are often made
in highly ambiguous circumstances - e.g.
– multiple motivations exists since choices affect coworkers
and the organization, as well as oneself,
– the organizations’ objectives may not be clear etc.. etc.
– context within which the choice needs to be made may be
unclear.
• Communication is the means for coping with and
reducing the ambiguity inherent in the organization:
Members talk with each others in an effort to make
sense of new situations, which entails gaining and
sharing information.
Five factors considered by members of
organization to be of prime importance in
communicating
(1) Superior to subordinate communication
(2) Downward communication
(3) Superiors' perceptions of communication
with subordinates
(4) Upward communication
(5) Reliability of information
1. Superior to subordinate
communication
• Superior to subordinate communication: As
measured by such questions as, to what extent
does:
– Your superior make you feel free to talk to him or her?
– Your superior listen to you when you tell him or her
about things that are bothering you?
– Your superior encourage you to let him or her know
when things are going wrong on the job?
2. Downward communication:
• Downward communication: As measured
by such questions as:
– Do people in top management say what they
mean and mean what they say?
– Is top management providing you with the
kinds of information you really want and need?
– Are you satisfied with explanations you get
from top management about why things are
done as they are?
3. Superiors' perceptions of
communication with subordinates
• Superiors' perceptions of communication
with subordinates: As measured by such
questions as:
– Do you believe your subordinates are frank and
candid with you?
– Do you believe your colleagues (coworkers) are
really frank and candid with you?
– Do you believe that your subordinates think
that you understand their problems?
4. Upward communication
• Upward communication: As measured by
such questions as:
– Do your opinions make a difference in the dayto-day decisions that affect your job?
– Do you believe your views have any real
influence in your organization?
– Does your superior let you participate in the
planning of your own work?
5. Reliability of information
• Reliability of information: As measured by
such questions as:
– Do you think that information received from your
subordinates is reliable?
– Do you think that information received from your
colleagues (or coworkers) is reliable?
1. Supervisory communication
• Supervisory communication is considered the
most important factor influencing an employee’s
communication satisfaction.
• The effective supervisor is described as supportive.
People particularly need confirmation and support
from their superiors.
• A wrong supervisory communication seems to
create negative side effect such as increased
complaints, absenteeism, employer turnover and
even sabotage.
A study of General Electric Company (1957)
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General Eletric Company (1957). The effective Manufacturing Foreman – An Observational
Study of the Job Activites of Effective and Ineffective Foremen. N.Y.,G. E. Public and Empoyee
Relations Research Service.
• Better foremen initiated fewer contacts, but spent more
time with persons when they did initiate a contact.
• Better and poorer foremen were contacted by others about
the same number of times, but better foremen spent more
time in each contact.
• Lower-rated foremen spent more time seeking information
from others, while better foremen spent more time
answering request for information.
• High-rated foremen spent more time in contacts where
information was passed voluntarily by either party.
• Better foremen engaged in more two-way conversations
on job-related matters.
Self-esteem in leadership
• Value of self-esteem in leadership and
followership.
• The true leader wants to enhance his/her
followers’ levels of self-esteem.
• Leaders must have a positive self-image.
2. Downward communication
• Such communication is initiated by the organization’s
upper management and then filters downward through
the “chain of command”.
• People are limited as to the amount of information they
can effectively absorb and react to.
• Therefore, management must, of necessity, restrict what
it communicates to subordinates.
• Organization implies some restriction of
communication. Without restrictions on
communication, any organizational member could be
buried under an avalanche of incoming messages from
all the other members.
Information overload
• Seven ways in which people adapt to information
overload (Miller,1964):
• (1) omission (failing to handle all the information)
• (2) error (ignoring or failing to correct errors when
made)
• (3) queuing (letting things pile up)
• (4) filtering (dealing with input in categories ranked
according to a priority system)
• (5) approximation (lowering standard of precision)
• (6) multiple channels (delegation of information
processing to others)
• (7) escape (refusal to handle the input al all)
The effectiveness of different forms of
downward communication
• Research on the effectiveness of different forms of
downward communication has shown that using a
combination of channels tends to get the test results.
• In a classic study, Dahle (1954) found that channels were
ranked in the following order of effectiveness (from most
to least effective):
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1. Combined oral and written
2. Oral only
3. Written only
4. Bulletin board
5. Grapevine
• A combination of written and oral channels gets
the best results.
• Sending the same message through more than one
channel creates redundancy.
• Redundancy seems to be helpful not only in
getting messages through but in ensuring that they
will be remembered.
• As the number of memos, meetings, phone calls,
and so increases, each person becomes that much
busier, since it requires time to attend to each of
these messages.
The law of diminishing returns
• An important consideration in organization
communication is so-called law of diminishing returns,
which states that more is better, up to a point.
Lack of accuracy
• Another characteristics of downward communication is
lack of accuracy.
• Conboy (1976) cites a study that polled 100 industrial
managers to determine what percentage of a message
got through to lower organizational levels.
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Board of directors
Vice presidents
General supervisors
Plant managers
Foremen
Workers
100% of communication content
67%
56%
40%
30%
20%
3. Upward communication
• Upward communication -the process whereby the
ideas, feelings, and perceptions of lower-level
employee are communicated to those at higher
levels in the organization.
Functions:
• It provides management with needed information
for decision making
• It helps employees relieve the pressures and
frustrations of the work situation.
• It enhances employees’ sense of participation in
the enterprise.
• It serves as a measure of the effectiveness of
downward communication.
• Degree of upward receptivity - willingness
to receive messages from subordinates.
• Degree of upward receptivity is most often
associated with so-called open-door policy
in business.
• If a manager has his/her door open, this
signals a willingness to communicate with
employees
Psychological barriers between
superior and subordinate.
• Three principles:
• 1. If a subordinate believes that disclosure of his /her
feelings, opinions, and difficulties may lead a superior to
block the achievement of personal goal, he/she will
hide or distort them.
• 2. The more a superior rewards disclosure of feelings,
opinions, and difficulties by subordinates, the more
likely they will be disclose them.
• 3. The more a superior discloses his/her own feelings,
opinions, and difficulties to subordinates and his/her
superior, the more likely subordinates will be to disclose
theirs.
• A special type of upward communication is ingratiation. This is
defined by Liden and Mitchell (1988) as “an attempt by individuals to
increase their attractiveness in the eyes of others.
• The authors identify three main forms of ingratiation. The first is
flattery. Those who are attempting to "get in good" with others above
them will often flatter or compliment the other person (often falsely).
The second is self-disclosures and advice requests. lngratiators may
reveal personal information or may request the advice of a superior to
gain favor. Third is attitude similarity and sincerity. The ingratiator
will attempt to stress any similarities between himself or herself and
the target person. However, research has shown that any of the
ingratiating behaviors mentioned will be effective only if the target
person perceives them as sincere.
4. Horizontal communication
• Horizontal communication is the exchanges
between and among agencies and personnel
on the same level of the organization chart.
• The survival of a modem organization often
depends on the degree to which it specializes.
• Coordination or integration of diverse units is
required to keep the organization running
efficiently.
Problems in horizontal communication
• Horizontal communication frequently suffers in
organizations because of employee loyality to a
given department.
• The situation is intensified in organizations that
reward people and group on a competitive basis.
• In such situations, each department may consider
itself to be at the top of the organization.
Four functions of horizontal communication
• 1. Task coordination: The department heads may meet
monthly to discuss how each department is contributing
to the systems’ goals.
• 2. Problem solving: The members of a department may
assemble to discuss how they will handle a threatened
budged cut. They may employ brainstorming
techniques.
• 3. Information sharing: The members of one department
may meet with members of another department to give
them some new data.
• 4. Conflict resolution: Members of one department may
meet to discuss a conflict inherent in the department or
between departments.
• Ineffective horizontal communication has
been cited as one important factor in the
space shuttle Challenger accident in
January 1986.
Reducing Barriers
• Some steps can be taken to reduce the barriers to horizontal
communication:
• 1. Relatively greater emphasis given to total organizational
effectiveness and the role of departments in contributing to
it; departments measured and rewarded on the basis of
their contribution to the total effort rather than their
individual effectiveness.
• 2. High interaction and frequent communication stimulated
between groups to work on problems of intergroup
coordination and help; organizational rewards given partly
on the basis of help which groups give to each other.
Reducing Barriers (cont.)
• 3. Frequent rotation of members among groups or
departments to stimulate high degree of mutual
understanding and empathy for one another's
problems.
• 4. Avoidance of any win-lose situation; groups
never put into the position of competing for some
organizational reward; emphasis always placed on
pooling resources to maximize organizational
effectiveness; rewards shared equally with all the
groups or departments.